


Grace of Baal

by the_netherlady



Category: Hannibal (TV), House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
Genre: Cannibalism, F/M, Gen, House of Leaves crossover, M/M, Mind the footnotes, and pomegrantes, and poor poor poor Will, because I love my murder family, hannibalkink, possible slashing down the line, somebody help Will Graham, there will be blood - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-15 15:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_netherlady/pseuds/the_netherlady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the HannibalKink meme. House of Leaves crossover. </p><p>________________________</p><p>If I hadn't opened the first binder, I might have wondered at the guy's tenacity. Not everyone would try to write a hundred volume transcription with mutilated eyes. But I did. I opened it. And I left the apartment with six binders, two cardboard boxes, a plywood chest, and three shoeboxes full of those wiry black scribbles. I don't know why Bev let me. I don't know why she nodded silently when I said I'd wanted to take a look at it. I don't know why she never came around when I was piecing this shit together scrap by scrap, and I really should have asked. </p><p>I should have said a lot of things to Beverly back then. Maybe she would have burned this thing when I didn't. </p><p>I probably wouldn't have let her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angry William, This is Hannibal in Hell

The Grace of Baal

By: Jack Crawford

With Introduction and Notes by: William Graham

 

[The first edition of Grace of Baal was privately distributed and did not include Chapter 13, Appendix VI, or the Index. Every effort has been made to provide appropriate translations and accurately credit all sources. If we have failed in this endeavor, we apologize in advance and will gladly correct in subsequent printings all errors or omissions brought to our attention. - The Editors.

 

1: Angry William, This is Hannibal in Hell

** Introduction **

` Jack Crawford was fucking insane. `

`That's what Beverly told me, when she took me to his apartment. The place was depressingly small. Honestly, a one room place--with a closet, a bathroom, and an even smaller closet with a refrigerator in it. The walls were painted in an off-white color, and according to Bev, the paint was from the 20s. That meant it was loaded with lead. I felt better when she told me he had no pets, to her knowledge. At the time, I really didn't give a shit about that. Opening the door, we were hit with this smell. The kind of smell that's like when you're sheets haven't been changed in months. When you've obviously neglected to take out the garbage a few too many times. When you've left a half-eaten cup of Ramen somewhere, forgot about it, and are paying the price not 12 hours later. The kind of smell that just screams Howard Hughes. `

`I wasn't really prepared for what it looked like. In my head, I pictured clutter, and dust and books and shit laying around. `

`That room was like a fucking hurricane ripped through it, invited a house party of natural disasters, who vomited Wall Street floor and some frat boy's dorm everywhere, and set off a small atomic explosion in a bookcase. There wasn't an inch of floor left to the naked eye. God, there were so many papers. There were so many fucking papers, and napkins, and burnt wood and postage stamps--I swear to fuck, he had written shit on shoe-laces for all I know. Every piece of it was covered in cramped, shaky writing, desperate scrawls--I think some of it was even etched in blood. Not comforting. `

`I can't remember why I said I'd go in the first place. Beverly knew the guy, apparently, and said she wanted help cleaning out his stuff. They worked together, a hundred years ago, when he was still some federal agent. He had some dramatic fall from grace years back, over a murder case I'd never heard about--and basically never left his apartment again. Bev wouldn't say much else, save that he was kind of a friend. Her eyes were red when she picked me up. I wish I would have said something. I wish I would have bought her that damned cup of coffee when I had the chance. `

`I told her--standing in the middle of that huge fucking mess--that we would need the national guard or something to actually clean this shit up. She said Goodwill was coming for most of the furniture, and the rest would be thrown out by the building. She just wanted to pack up the significant stuff and store it. God knows why. I didn't look at her. I didn't want to look in, and see the reasons because it never gets any easier when I do. Especially when people are grieving. I don't make eye-contact. I have a thing. `

`Two hours in, I started seeing what he was trying to do. There was a half-formed binder--six of them, actually--full to the brim of what, I'm guessing, was the beginning of this clusterfuck. The first binder had a label, in white masking tape. `

`` **_LECTOR_ , transcribed by Jack Crawford.** 1.`Bev took one look at it, and she made this face--I was staring at her chin, but she made this _face_. She said he started working on it after he was forced to retire. After he had, apparently, put a gun to his temple and failed to kill himself. I didn't ask about that part. I remember that well enough from the news. Jack Crawford had walked into Beeswell Park, in broad daylight, fed some pigeons, and shot himself in the head. His hand was shaking so badly that he had missed his brain all together, and the bullet ripped straight through his corneas. It was all over YouTube for awhile. 2. I never watched the footage. `

`If I hadn't opened the first binder, I might have wondered at the guy's tenacity. Not everyone would try to write a hundred volume transcription with mutilated eyes. But I did. I opened it. And I left the apartment with six binders, two cardboard boxes, a plywood chest, and three shoeboxes full of those wiry black scribbles. I don't know why Bev let me. I don't know why she nodded silently when I said I'd wanted to take a look at it. I don't know why she never came around when I was piecing this shit together scrap by scrap, and I really should have asked. `

`I should have said a lot of things to Beverly back then. Maybe she would have burned this thing when I didn't. `

`I probably wouldn't have let her. `

`At least, not after I'd made sense of it. By then, no one came around anymore. Not Bev. Not Georgia. Not even Alana. Hell, not even my fucking dogs would come in from the cold, and they wandered off into the dark, one by one until Winston was the only one left. ~~And he stayed there, crouched by my side until I gave him to~~`

`The light wouldn't stop swinging. Back and forth, steady, streaming--and I realized it was a clock. A large, glowing pendulum that was ticking and tocking, tick, tock, tick, tock, blinding out the periphery and keeping me in the constant dark. Not dark, not like your lights have gone out, or there's a snow storm, or you're groping through a basement, waiting to adjust to the depth until you find a light switch. There's no _adjusting_ to this dark. There's no waning moon, or shapes, or even objects to stumble over. It's a void. It's an all encompassing swallow. You're as solid as the dark around you, and it's pushing in like a needle--only there's no give. It slides into place as if it's always meant to be there, dipping in and out, in and out, with unseen unbreakable thread, leaving a trail--intricate, deep, and unable to remove. And even when the light comes back--when the golden glow swinging in front of your eyes finally, _finally_ fucking stops, and you're home--or in your drive way--or on your goddamn _roof_ --no matter where you go, no matter how many people you brush shoulders with or faces your desperately avoid--or tables to sit at, or food you choke down--you can feel it. That swallow, rising up behind you and twisting into the sky on dagger-like spikes, like it's bone growing out of the _dark_ , twisting and shaping higher and higher and higher as it paints it's _dark_ across the whole world. And this is its design. `

`This is my design.`

______________________  
1\. No copy of this film has ever been found.  
2\. According the maintainers of the video hosting site, this footage has never existed. There is no outstanding record of a suicide attempt made by one Jack Crawford.


	2. Chapter 2

_Ji turi būti?_


	3. 2: I Live At The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The Office Door".

**L E C T O R**

2: I Live At The End

 

They have all called it a hoax. It's one of those stories you expect to find in The Weekly World News, or on a website filled to bursting with impossible tales and the stand-by Bigfoot photographs. Enthusiasts and critics alike have poured over their laptops and dictionaries to find new ways to deride it's authenticity; to disprove the material seen on the tapes. Regardless of personal perception, LECTOR has spurred an incredible amount of attention and, to be frank, obsession with the public. If it is a hoax, it is one of exceptional quality. Not even the harshest of skeptics can deny this single fact. 

Though most of the time devoted to the film is spent on the anomalous nature and debunking the impossibilities of the house on Shadow Glen Drive, recently there has been a flux in the study of the events themselves. More specifically, of the people therein. A popular summation, as made by Abel Gideon3, is that the cinematic artistry suggests a focus not on the house as a living entity, but the people--the lost and the living--that wander therein directly affected the nature of the property. They themselves caused the spark of 'life'. Particularly, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Gideon goes on to say that Hannibal's infatuation with human beings, while disturbingly disconnecting himself from his own race, is the cause of the public being so enamored with the documentary in turn. Dr. Lecter's unhealthy passion for people is so apparent in the film that it seems to infect its audience with the same malady. Albeit, not to such disquieting extremes. 

This is not a ghost story. 

This is not a horror movie.

This is not a documentary.

This is not a science fiction re-accounting. 

 

There is no genre that LECTOR can be easily fit into, though many have tried. There are far too many uneven elements to neatly categorize what LECTOR truly is; the emotional whiplash is startling. In one instance, we see the start of a tender love story, and in the next we find a bleeding heart on a cutting board, fingered expertly by the doctor before its butchering.

18th century poet William Blake4 embodies the true nature of men in A Divine Image from Songs of Experience, particularly Dr. Lecter, stating that 'Terror the human form divine,/ Secresy the human dress'. This is quoted by Bedelia moments after the first grisly display in the kitchen is cleaned; stating that Hannibal Lecter wears a 'fine human suit'. Dr. Lecter is smitten with human kind, but he, perhaps on the basest level, does not consider himself one of them. Most viewers agree. 

To this day, avid researchers theorize that the film itself is a warning to that end. LECTOR is a vessel for a far simpler underlying message about being stalwartly careful about those you choose as friends and family. That not all are truly human beneath their skin, regardless of how we may share a genome. A commentary on the darkest of psyches, and how psychology and modern medicine cannot answer the questions asked about a monster hiding in flesh. Dr. Hannibal Lecter, however, had only this to say, "The film is as it is. You will see it as you Will. However. Should this house be known to you, as you pass its quiet gray sidewalks, and you feel it call, please. Answer it. Nothing's there." 

I regret to say many have followed his advice. 

 

The beginning of this phenomena was not LECTOR itself, but of a ten-minute film posted on an all but blank website host, via a video uploaded to Daily Motion two years ago.6 "The Office Door" is a puzzling optical illusion that every student film maker in the country has poured and rambled over since its discovery. The problem here is the accompanying note below the media player stating that all events in the short film actually took place. 

The short is one continuous shot. It begins with a low-grade hi8 film flickering into frame of an unobtrusive ash-colored door, surrounded by rich cream walls, and two windows that stretch towards the ceiling. Both of the windows are open behind their translucent red-and-beige curtains, ruffling the fabric. The camera moves towards the window, and a hand stretches out to brush aside the fabric--a bright teal bracelet on the wrist, accompanied by a silver band on the thumb. We see the short red-tipped photinias in the garden bed, and the long green spans of the lawn when we hear a voice--coming from behind the camera. A thick, deep accent is present, and though we do not understand what the voice has said, it seems to issue both concern and disapproval. Abigail's voice answers him, the frame shaking as she does so. "It's okay, dad; this is the easiest way to do it." We see a black, scuffed Converse shoe step into the woodchips of the garden bed, and the film turns to the plain pale brick of the town house exterior. The frame moves slowly over the space between windows, jolting as Abigail trips in the wood chips, causing Bedelia to call out in concern. "I'm fine." Abigail responds, absently, carefully panning over the brick between the windows. This shot is the most important. It shows that the interior door, if opened, will undoubtedly lead to insulation or siding of the home and nothing more. She climbs back through the second window, the camera shaking--catching a momentary view of dark, high heels and polished Italian shoes. The frame turns again towards the ash door, the hand with the teal bracelet reaching out to touch the silver knob. The fingers brush the metal, and curl back. Another hand reaches out, the sleeve a dark charcoal with a blue cuff peeking from under it, and deftly pulls the door open. The reveal is a long, dark hallway, the light of the room showing a ten-foot spans--but could be longer, as the shadows swallow the light in the narrow space. Abigail takes her journey back through the windows to prove once more that there is nothing jutting out from the modest brick wall to accommodate this hallway into darkness, showing the honest impossibility of this ash-colored door. Once the frame moves back to the door again, Dr. Hannibal Lecter stands on the threshold, one hand on the frame, the other stretched inside, gazing into the abyss. Abigail jumps once more, the film shaking, her sightline forgotten as the focus lands on his richly dressed torso and the darkness before him. Bedelia speaks somewhere behind her, her tone even as she she says, "Careful, Hannibal. It's going to gaze back into you.7" Abigail's voice takes on a shrill note, though she carefully keeps her distance from the open doorway. "Dr. Lecter, don't go in there again." There's a long moment before his shoulders tilt towards Abigail and the camera and he finally steps away from the dark. "It is freezing in there." 

The film abruptly ends. 

This short has never been distributed in a physical copy, and can only be viewed as online media. 

Three months after this film was posted, another followed--one watched more greedily than the former. "Examination #3" is eight minutes in length, and seems sloppily pasted together in its edits. Upon first viewing, the events do not make sense, as nothing seems connected, or leading to any kind of story structure. Many have dissected the piece, and most just 'enjoy' the bizarre imagery. The first shot catches Dr. Lecter mid phrase. His eyes are shadowed, his cheekbones much more prominent than prior footage in LECTOR. "--unsure how long. Perhaps only minutes. Perhaps weeks. I am like to believe the music is only in my mind; a desperate echo for something other than the...I could light a match. But I would set my own heart aflame. Will you eat it out of my hand. And I will weep as you depart from me." 

The film cuts to Abigail arguing loudly with Frederick Chilton, Bedelia standing off to the side, reaching for the teenager who choking on obscenities, claiming that 'he' "destroyed her inside and out" and she "is waiting for him to come back". At this time, it is unknown who 'he' is, and if 'he' and 'him' are two different people or one and the same. 

The other shots are as follows:

Autumn leaves surrounding a bare maple tree.  
A long ornate table, covered in exquisitely prepared dishes.  
A split pomegranate, lying in a pool of liquid too dark to be juice of the fruit.  
A shot of a child(Clarice), hugging a plush lamb doll to her chest; her face serene as she openly cries.  
A tall pair of twisting antlers mounted above a shale-covered fireplace. 

Then the scene cuts back to Dr. Hannibal Lecter, leaning over a precipice of dark, his eyes still shadowed, his breath curling into white mist. "All her tender limbs with terror shook8." 

There are only four more shots.  
Dark hallways.  
Windowless rooms.  
Stairs.  
A hand pressing down on a severed lung. 

Then a new voice. "I'm lost. I'm not alone, but I'm lost. Help me. Please, just help me." The camera turns, and we see a mouth--with apparent unilateral cleft reparation. The teeth are covered in grime, and hold a synthetic appearance--suggesting that they are dentures. He breathes rapidly, whining before stating, "I'm what you want me to be. I've done it, and I'm what you've had me make myself. I'm not Francis, I'm not D, I've reborn myself, please, I did it--just _help me_. There's something else here, and it's looking, it's hunting, and I need to find it first--DO YOU HEAR ME. [incoherent mumbling, half a sob] Dammit, now _help me_." 

This ends the strange mishmash of video, depressingly unfinished and misunderstood until the release of LECTOR.

For six months, there was nothing. Few clues as to who these people were, though many correctly theorized the identity of Dr. Lecter, though we had never fully seen his face on film. After the explosive Chesapeake Ripper9 case, there were few that could not recognize the man's distinct voice, or the gentle but detached reverie of his oft quotations. This possibility alone garnered much attention all over the world. When the full film was quietly released over the internet, the following had grown to such size that the online community had spread the word of its existence to every large sharing community and blogspot in a mere 17 seconds after posting. While LECTOR received no public acclaim in the mainstream, it quickly became something of a cult film. Many suggested that the people were only playing the parts, that they had found actors that resembled the real persons in question. I personally think this theory came from the disbelief that the events in LECTOR could have possibly occurred; that Dr. Hannibal Lecter could not possibly be what he is. 

Regardless, the story is thrilling, and though it may leave you sick to your stomach, the structure is outstanding, and, I suppose, deserves whatever praise it can get. 

 

________________________________

`3. Book by Abel Gideon, _"Shadows in the Glen: The Cannibal House"_ , chapter 17 I think, 2011.`  


`4. Songs of Experience,1794. He references a lot of Blake. It makes me really uncomfortable.`5  
5\. In an effort to limit confusion, Mr. Graham's footnotes will appear in Courier font, while Jack Crawford's will appear in Times. We also wish to note here that we have not actually met Mr. Graham. All matters regarding the publication were addressed in letters or in rare instances over the phone. - The Editors.  
6\. As with Youtube, maintainers of this video hosting website have no history of these films being posted.  
`7. Friedrich Nietzsche, "Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you." This is about not becoming the monsters you fight. Thanks, Fred. That's so fucking helpful.`  
`8. More Blake. 'A Little Girl Lost'.  
``9. I looked for this for fucking ever. There's no fucking newspaper clipping, or book, or whatever the hell on any Chesapeake Ripper.`

` `Abigail calls Hannibal 'dad' a total of 8 times in this thing. The rest of it is 'Dr. Lecter', and once 'Hannibal'. I hear her voice in my head--of course, it's just a high, lofty generic female teenager's voice, but I hear it--and it sounds like every time she says it, she's trying it out. Seeing if it fits the man with the apparently perfectly coiffed hair and occasional plaid suits. I try to hear what his accent sounds like. He's Lithuanian, I think, and I've never heard a Lithuanian speak before. It's not cold, not the way Abigail hears it, it's deep, and resonant and graceful and terrifying like a sea with no waves. Like the moon is _terrified_ of pulling on the water, and marring it's perfectly reflective surface. That happens out in the Baltic sea some times, where the world's longest bridge is. The ocean just goes still, and you drift through the fog and water like entering some other world. That's what I feel like his voice is. Calming, horrible, and deep. I could sleep if a voice like that would talk to me. ` `

` `I've been craving pomegranates. I remember a schoolmate, a girl I couldn't look at, but she had these red patent leather shoes and straight teeth, and I liked her. She had one in her lunch box, and offered me a handful of seeds. They were juicy, and tart and left a film on my tongue that I remember enjoying. I wish I hadn't looked over at the fruit in her hands. The pale yellow was bright against the deep ruby marbles in the fruit's flesh. The spidery lines of yellow passing through the shining crimson knobs, making them appear as blisters on jaundiced skin. A growth fat with blood and pus, and I suddenly imagined those shining, pert red bumps growing through my own skin, down my neck, shoulders, patches on my arms and legs--and I saw her thin little fingers plucking them out and biting them with too-white teeth, smiling when the crevice left a clean hollow pocket with a dark, brown stem at its heart. I vomited on her red shoes. ` `

` `I don't miss being a kid. Everyone was adamant about eye contact, to make sure I was listening. I had good grades, I never caused a scene--at least, I never instigated anything--and I kept my head down. But all these teachers, the students, their parents, the fucking guidance counselor, they were convinced of my 'outwardly blatant disrespect' was grounds for treating me like I had personally killed every puppy in the nation out of glee. When I told my teacher about her not-that-obvious affair she was having with the groundskeeper, they had me expelled. I went to another county for fifth and forth grade. It wasn't intentional. She wanted me to look at her. It's not my fault.` `


	4. 3: That I Almost Erased

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarice

3: That I Almost Erased

 

LECTOR's medium is often under debate, from an artistic and cinematographic standpoint. The film itself is made of many different types of video, ranging from digital, to hi8, to poor-quality VHS hand-held recordings. It's obvious LECTOR, or the underlying idea of the film as skeptics call it, was never meant to be any kind of feature length film to be viewed by others. This is made apparent by the slow introduction of Abigail Hobbs, sitting directly in front of the camera lens, speaking quietly, disdainfully, of a new therapy for her acclimation to Dr. Lecter's home. This is the way the film begins. The simplicity and innocence of this beginning stands to be one of the more poignant moments of the entire work. The shot is of very low definition, possibly made from a webcam mounted on a laptop or something similar; the room is furnished and bare, a sign that this teen girl has not lived within it before; the light is low and gritty, and Abigail speaks with an even, practiced tone of indifference towards her apparent therapy. The only thing that gives her away are her stiff shoulders, and constant wandering gaze--darting to walls and corners instead of the camera. It is clear that she has been told this video would not be seen by others, and should act as a personal diary, but she does not believe it. She believes her privacy will be inevitably breached in the weeks to come. 

What is most disquieting over this 9 minute sequence is that it's normalcy gives no warning for the horrors about to be witnessed in that house. 

Dr. Eldon Stammets states, "This is the beginning of the transformation, if you will. We see from this that Abigail is content with her new home, but stands off from her new guardian--as well as her doctors. She is accepting, perhaps even happy, but she is surrounded by walls of her own making due to a very traumatic past. In LECTOR, we see these walls come down. Not pulled down in triumph and understanding, however, for this is no Berlin for her. These walls are _ripped_ , crushed, and ultimately destroyed by her terror and growing dependency on Hannibal Lecter. Instead of coming into her own strength, and learning how to let people in naturally--healthily--as a hurt young woman growing to adulthood, she almost seems to revert to a child-like state in her need for comfort and protection. She becomes endearingly co-dependent. By the end, his presence draws her out--all he needs to do now is offer his hand, and the loyal daughter will be there."10

Dr. Hannibal Lecter's manipulations to this end are so subtle, one must return to the first few moments in the beginning of the film again and again to spot them all. These moments are few, but deceivingly domestic and normal. Before the ash-colored door makes an appearance, the film begins with notes of family, love, and recovery. The scene shown after Abigail's first confessional is of the dining room. We see Dr. Hannibal Lecter placing two obsidian-colored candlesticks in the middle of a long ornate dining table; a fireplace decorated with bulls horns and shale looming behind him. He moves fluidly through the motions of lighting the white-wax candles and delicately waving out a match. "Here's the diningroom. It's really big, and made for a lot of people. Dr. Lecter likes to host parties some times." Abigail's voice is light, almost amused, as the camera focuses on Dr. Lector's thumb wiping an unseen smudge from his highly polished table. 

"Abigail." 

The shot expands, and Dr. Lecter is looking towards the lens--over it, directly at Abigail behind camcorder. Here, we get the 'full effect' of him, so to speak. He is graceful, strong, refined; immaculate in a powder-blue suit, waistcoat, and white shirt. His tie is golden yellow paisley with matching pocket-square. His gaze is piercing. "You're almost glad he's not looking at the viewer. It would be a little too intense if he were, as evidenced later on in the movie--he's got a hellfire in those red eyes." Says Brian Zeller, self-publisher of crime-scene science and analysis magazines and self-proclaimed pop-culture specialist. "If he had, though, we probably would have suspected something early on. Maybe. No--maybe not. He's the best monster-playing-human I think I've ever seen."11

"Whatever you're cooking smells really good." Abigail moves around the table, taking in the gray wall on the other side of the diningroom, filled with planters and tender green leaves. "What are you doing?" Hannibal's tone is level, but there is a hint of demand. This may be something he did not expect from her. "I thought I'd show the house. It's--kind of relevant, I don't know." She turns the camera towards the doctor, and we see he has draped a hand over the back of a chair, fixing the teenager with a very blank face. A silence stretches between them, the only noise being the hiss of the poor microphone on the camcorder. The picture wavers as we hear Abigail shifting foot-to-foot. 

"He's waiting for her to explain. It's merciful, something he doesn't allot to very many people." Says Abel Gideon. "It's important, that mercy. Just a whisper, a hint, that Abigail is different from the rabble. And he even lets her know, in his small ways--with interaction with people around them. He doesn't ask. He just waits. A beneficent predator giving the lamb a chance to flee."12

The sightline droops as Abigail takes a long breath. "I'm supposed to talk about my life, how I'm feeling. I--like it here. And it's all so beautiful, and if I'm going to keep any of it, I'd just like..." 

Here, we assume she means the footage of her video diary. However, some theorize she means keeping the house. That she wants to keep her new home, her new life, and tentative happiness. She wants to keep the fledgling bonds she's made, and her comfort with Hannibal. Abigail is a girl accustomed to loss. She will not hold on to this pleasantness if it's only going to be taken away. We see Hannibal moving closer, and the camera drops lower, now focusing on his neatly buttoned vest. When he speaks, affection is startlingly clear, very different from any other tone we have heard from Dr. Lecter in "The Office Door", or "Examination 3". "Abigail. You are not my patient. I am not your psychiatrist. This is your home, and you are welcome to do as you please. I only ask for some warning in the future." His last has a bit of an edge. A soft admonishment, as if reminding someone of their most basic table manners. Abigail answers with a soft 'okay', and the doctor moves away--his footfalls falling out of earshot. Abigail sighs, loudly, and adjusts the camcorder again. We see a long, somewhat steady shot of the diningroom--as if to reinforce Abigail's prior declaration of the home's beauty. 

"This shot." Gushes crime-novelist Jimmy Price in an interview13, "This is my favorite shot. Because when you think about it, this room is his temple. You get me? It's--his place of worship. The table isn't a table, it's an altar. The chairs are pews, or kneeling rugs--whatever--around the altar, where he sets his sacrifices. Or, rather, where his sacrifices are set. It depends on how you look at it. Is Hannibal worshiping some dark God, or are they givings to himself?" 

Until near half-way through the film, the cameras are manned solely by Abigail Hobbs. Many find it interesting that she is shown as the principle player in the story from the beginning, but, ultimately, LECTOR is about Dr. Hannibal Lecter. But even that is subject to much debate. Particularly by Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier. "It was meant to be Abigail's private diary. These tapes were never meant to be anything more than a form a therapy. Something to help her settle into a new life, a new home. A family. It escalated to a strange chronical only after those first few inches. Hannibal was never supposed to be a substantial 'character', if you're looking at it like a film. I don't understand that, among the public. To be honest, I still don't understand it--any of it. I never did understand it. He had been living there for so long, and when things...changed, the house noticed. Like it started to breathe. It was fine for the first month or two. They were happy, simple, normal looking. Like any father and daughters learning to live with another person again."

And this is how the film moves for the first few scenes. After the diningroom, there are more shots of the home--Hannibal reading in the office, Abigail waving to her camcorder while gesturing tiredly at a pile of dishes in the sink, how her room has been transformed with personal touches; exclaimingly delightedly over her dark purple bed-spread full of goose-down, Bedelia handing her coat to the doctor as Abigail introduces her to the camera. The spans of a well-kept backyard, against a setting sun, complete with loud cicadas singing in the background. In between these scenes are a number of confessionals, Abigail reaccounting her day, or trying to talk of her nightmares and unease. There is one sharing a recipe for blackberry strudel that she would like the doctor to teach her. Then, comes one confessional much different from the last. Abigail sits, puffy-eyed, in her very dark bedroom--her face lit only by what we can assume is a computer screen.  


"I went back to the--other place today. Where I was staying, before. And, uhm..." She clears her throat, not making eye-contact with the camera. "I talked to my doctors, and whatever. Dunno why they couldn't come out here. Bedelia does all the time. But uhm...she's still here. I don't know why they keep her there, she's too little, and it's not fair. The nurses--they're assholes, and mean, and I just--" She scrubs her face, sniffling. "...Maybe Dr. Lecter can do something. Maybe he can help me find a place for her to be." 

"It was something Abigail wouldn't let go." Dr. Du Maurier says. "She made Hannibal drive down twice more, pleading with me--and him--to talk to her. Clarice was unresponsive when she came to us. When her family delivered her, she was near catatonic. After her father was killed in the line of duty, she was sent to live with her uncle on his farm. He explained that she had run off in the middle of the night, trying to steal one of his sheep. We tried many times to get her to talk with us, to bring her back to the surface long enough to understand what she had been trying to do that night. To understand what occurance had left her in this state. When I allowed Hannibal to sit in on one of her sessions, there was instantaneous progress. I was astounded, to say the least. It took some time, but...she too came to thehouse." 

The next scene follows a small girl, aged six, through the front foyer of the house. Her hair is a dusty light brown, held back from her face by a white headband, and when she turns to the camera, her eyes are a startling blue. We can see Hannibal Lecter's shale-gray slacked legs standing behind her. "Say 'hi', Clarice." Abigail sing-songs, causing the girl to smile. She waves shyly before turning and taking the doctor's hand.  
_______________________________  
`10. _"Reaching Out: LECTOR"_ , 2011, Dr. Eldon Stammets. I read some of it, actually. 100,000 species of fungi. What the actual fuck.`  
`11. _"Squint Digest"_ , issue 204.`  
`12. Some interview on TruCrime or something. `14  
`13. `````_"The Killer Next Door"_ episode 93, 'The Cannibals'.  
14\. This interview has not been found, and cannot be properly annotated. - The Editors.

**Author's Note:**

> To view the fully colorized version of this publication, please visit http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/2246.html?thread=3515078#cmt3515078
> 
> Thank you. 
> 
> \- The Editors.


End file.
